So, we redesigned the site! That happened! Do note that the changes were not merely cosmetic. We've also tried to make the site work better for you. It's a work in progress-we have a pretty thorough list of things that we still want to improve-but here's what we've done so far.
Improved The Way You Manage Your Profile
See that link up there on the right that says "Login"? (If you're already logged in, it will say "Settings") Well, if you click that you can add the information that goes on your profile page, change your avatar (LOL, ABADAH) and login/password info. No more Gravatar! (You probably don't know what that is because most of you-understandably-could never figure out how to change your user icons on it! See, for example, Balk, and he works here.)
Aggregated Comments
Hey, want to see what other funny/not-funny comments another user has made? Click the commenter name and you'll go to a page with all of their bons mots. Now your baseless judgments of other commenters will be a little baseless, because you can see their whole body of work! But probably you will mostly use it to reread your own. Hey, that's cool! We don't judge.
Organized Contributor Information
Although the link to this page is on our list of things to fix, we now have a contributors page where you can sort through all of the people who are writing for the site and also go to their individual contributor page that lists all of their posts.
Enhanced General Navigation Elements
We're trying to make it easier for you to find the information that you want. Expect to see more of an emphasis on content organization, mostly by topic or author, thus helping you get from point A (where you are now) to point B (surrounded by things that you enjoy reading) with a minimum of fuss.
Added Twitter/Facebook Connect
Now you can login by way of other accounts you have on existing internet websites. That's pretty much that. Do note that those will, obviously, leave comments under your real name (or whatever fake name you use on those sites).
So while that's what we've done thus far, there's still plenty we're working on to make the site better-not to mention fixing the inevitable bugs that have come up since we launched the new site. In an effort to be completely transparent-we are all about transparency!-here's what's on our list of short-term goals and fixes:
• Make our RSS feed look normal again
• Resolve general paragraph and linespace formatting issues
• Improve the speed and loading issues of the site, which are making EVERYONE angry
• Work on the slugs-those green-arrowy things that help categorize posts by broad topic-and the way they function
• Enhance the ease of navigation between posts
• Fix the weather thingy (up top, on the right! See it?) so that it actually works
And those are just the issues that we're aware of. You may be having a problem that we don't even know about! Feel free to share, either in the comments here or our inbox. We'd love to hear from you.
I DID NOT WRITE THAT TITLE. THAT WAS ALEX. I HATE ALEX.
I made an icon for myself now! It's THAT EASY!
Me too.
Glad I wasn't alone in my confusion.
I don't know if it was an actual thing that needed doing, but I appreciate however my icon/avatar got auto-converted. Thanks David!
THAT is a good lookin hairline.
I LOVE THE WEATHER THINGY IT IS MY FAVORITE WEATHER THINGY!
Concurrence.
Who cares about the weather thingy. Fix the weather!
Is it 34 degrees everywhere, or just inside my computer?
maybe just in my heart.
Units! 35 °C is sweltering
I think it actually is 35°C here today. The Awl is THAT smart!
MORE STORIES ABO--sorry.
More stories about bugs and slugs.
I know I'm the design snob, but if you could standardize thumbnail sizes, I think it would help a lot -- the entry point for reading jumps around if otherwise, and worse, it jumps on the left side (normally ragging of text is the right side -- I know that I'm talking blocks of text, but it's blog, so you tend to scan all new posts at once). So it's like reading right justified text that is also right aligned.
Oh, actually, he DID? But Balk and I are undermining him. (In part because the new photo system is slightly tricky and in transition, and we're too stupid to use it.) So you and Cho are on the same page actually, and the front page image sizes will settle down soon into near-uniformity!
CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, because 99 (commenter #98) cares enough to say something.
Also (because I care), maybe make a dummy thumbnail for quicklinks (like a 1px clear the width of the default size)? Then they would align as well, which would be great for those pesky three liners where the last line jumps out to the div edge. Then everything would be perfect and I could go back to complaining about the logo. KTHXBI.
More quicklinks! Quicklink! Quicklink! Quicklink!
Also, expanded and maybe revolving ordering criteria for "Most" drop-down. Most reblogged! Most swearing! Most beefy!
Now that there's no more automatic page reloading, does this mean I can finally close my perpetually open Awl Tab?
NO.
...and that's when I clicked "Close Tab."
Silly! Like I was actually gonna do it.
"But probably you will mostly use it to reread your own."
Awww, you know us so well!
Day 2 check in: Still really liking it! And mine eyes have adjusted to the "busyness" (those scarequotes are meant to indicate that it really isn't all that busy, compared to other sites, just busier than it was here in these parts on Monday and CHANGE IS HARD FOR ME, OKAY?). If I may: The slugs needn't be two different colors to denote quicklinks v. everything else. And it irks ever so slightly that bylines only come up in posts that take photos but I see why, design-wise, that's happening, so.
But I REALLY, REALLY like it and thing Young David deserves a new pair of fancy shoes or something.
I know others have mentioned it, but it's not on the list so: I just tried to use the Edit function to fix a typo up thar ^ and no dice, it appears not to work.
WHERE ARE THE DAILY CATPILLS? FIX THE NEWSLETTER!
YES! The Newsletter!
YES. COMING SOON.
NOW YOU'VE SAID IT AND YOU BETTER MEAN IT.
Plus, more Percoset-y Vchats between a smoker, a cat, and Ken Layne.
Will the weather thingy tell me the weather where I am, or just outside The Awl offices?
It's pretty much just for own personal use and edification. :/
I will look at the weather indicator, and then I will look outside, and then I will break down.
There are images on the weather indicator coming soon!
I like reading that it's 32 in NYC when it's 65 in LA. It reminds me why I am here.
Oh good, I was worried you'd caught The CAP. Oh my God, I do apologize.
@kitten_witawip - yeah, pretty much! I hear they're getting, like, feet of snow this weekend?
You couldn't have waited three hours?
I DID NOT GET THIS YESTERDAY AND STILL DO NOT GET TODAY. PLZ EXPLAIN.
Oh I just like to have fun with the timestamps! And make really bad jokes.
Where are the Camel cigarette pack design elements?
love the tag on the photo. and thanks for the improving the avatar feature. i was feeling real internet illiterate there for a while.
You should upload an image then!
I'm trying...keeps timing out. :-( I'll keep at it.
SORRY. Working on the server, hope to have it resolved by the end of the weekend....
i got it working. thanks for your unending concern for my image-related peccadilloes. :-)
It would help me out a bunch if you could re-redesign the site to look exactly like an excel spreadsheet.
Cat, the cat cam.
Cat looking at the pizza cam cam.
Yay! Playing around with the settings took up nearly 15 minutes of my unemployed day. Now about the other 8.25 hours...
Oh way to one up a guy with the BEST BATMAN-RELATED AVATAR IN REALITY.
A gay geek's gotta do what a gay geek's gotta do.
Oh, and uploading that avatar is prolly the high point of my week -- unless the check from the Nigerian prince comes today!
I miss having AN ACTUAL IMAGE OF AN AWL.
I am CONSISTENTLY OUTVOTED on this.
I agree :(
Does the cat get a vote? Because surely he too would agree it's completely insane not to have said ACTUAL IMAGE OF AN AWL.
It's for punching.
Can we agree that even if there's no picture of an awl on the front page, the little favicon in the location bar should still be one? Instead of BLANK, I mean?
There should be awls EVERYWHERE.
Make another stab at it.
A bear with a giant awl is my vote
a bear with a giant awl is terrifyingly awesome (i.e. seconded)
How about a furless bear with an awl? Terrifyingly awesome or just terrifying?
Could you guys make it so that whenever we leave a comment, sometimes it works right away, but other times, a little graphic spins around endlessly, sometimes for minutes and minutes and minutes, and so you're scared to close the window because you don't want the comment to disappear and also scared to repost it because probably it will appear eventually, although not always?
That's just a feature I've seen on some other blogs.
I copy my more brilliant missives to clipboard in case they get eaten by the posting ghost.
I always do that for the short comments that submit without any issue, and then forget as soon as I spend twenty minutes on a really long one.
Oh, plus? The site is now dog-slow because you have gone plugin-happy and each page now loads about a bajillion javascripts, plus the "edit comments" plugin hammers the WP database with a squabillion queries so you should probably just lose that function?
Touche.
And when you fix it, could you also make it so we can edit other people's comments, too? But really, just so I can edit other people's comments. Also, more porno.
Touché!
But the new way threaded comments are presented is really awesome!
NSFW: http://www.buzzfeed.com/eliot/homer-as-a-vagina-nsfw-26q
Ugh. That was supposed to be a response to Mx. Moff.
I think the threading is off. And I hope that is Photoshopped.
Especially since it doesn't actually seem to work anyway? (Here on Safari 4.04 at least.)
fix the daily emails? those were nice.
I love your puppy, my brother just got a corgi (sorry, off-topic)
i highly recommend checking out the Puppy Bowl 2010 starting line-up! (There is a chihuahua/pug mix that is kind of amazing).
More Linkbait.
I read The Awl in Google Reader. Ever since the redesign it's been spitting out a dupe of the headline right under the header (or picture) with a timestamp, like this: "The Las Vegas Observer @11:45 AM" Any reason why this is happening, or am I just a fucking retard?
You seem confident that they are mutually exclusive.
You said "retard," you sexist.
but it looks great on my phone.
@Multiphasic: watch it racist.
ST, I have the same problem. I emailed a screen shot yesterday and apparently we were waiting for David to wake up...
You should REALLY upgrade from Wordpress 2.8.6 to 2.9.1 RIGHT NOW btw because there are security holez (and it looked like some pages had been hacked to add spamlinks yesterday).
And how.
I meant MORE THAN USUALLY.
No more Gravatar! (Related: Interrobang! Any excuse at all to type interrobang!)
(Interrobang!!)
What about a feature that tells you if someone has responded to one of your comments? I've seen that on other sites (but those sites mean nothing to me, your the site I really love).
Or is that too self-centered?
You are
you're
Also, about that edit function.....
I want this too.
I think they like the berserk rages we get into when we we've mixed up you're and your for the 30th time.
Yes. Also, how do I turn off adblock so I see your ads so you don't starve to death before you fix everything?
@badthings right click adblock and choose "disable on theawl.com" or add this to your adblock list "@@theawl.com" without the quotation marks
Thanks!
Wow, Flash is/ really slow!
Screw the Flash,
Just pay Cash.
I appear to be logged in to Facebook as well as my Awl account, and I can't figure out why I keep getting logged back in to Facebook, and I can't tell whether being logged in to Facebook actually does anything when I'm also logged into my Awl account. SHOULD I BE WORRIED?
Oh I see, this way my comments can appear on my Facebook profile. That's kind of cool, I guess.
None of the links in the upper right work for me.
Sent y'all an e-mail with error details.
Please fix.
KTHXBAI.
Argh. I just figured out the whole Gravatar thing yesterday!
*pats on back
I usually hate redesigns! And I loved the previous Avatar of the Awl! But this is good too, if this makes you guys more money!
Between not looking like a Tumblr page and the book deal, does it mean that you guys are now *gasp* mainstream?
Edit Comments function? What are you all talking about, about an Edit Comments function? Guys? I feel left out at the lunchroom.
(Will I be able to go back through human history and fix all the links that I frcked up?)
i've come around and am now a complete proponent of the redesign, but I am curious about how many clickthroughs you get from the link and lede at the top to the recent posts
Oh hey the RSS feed is sort of fixed now? Huzzah! Because the double title/"@2:45" thing was giving me a headache.
well done
where's my avatar
I love the new look! Now, can we please have free booze too?
I dunno. Every bug I report gets ignored, so why continue to file them? Half this stuff is basic webdev and extremely basic webtype.
OK, so I mostly like it, but the black bground and white text over the 5 piccies at the top isn't really doing it for me. As in, it's not pretty and hard to read. Also, emails! I miss the emails, too.
This just in: Please stop working on the green slugs. Make them go away. The annoying little fuckers simply piss me off, offend my design sensibilities, and busy up an already well busied-up page. If they don't add useful info (or generate ad bucks) then can't you please just kill them?
Cho: Drop the newsletter for the time being and please to fix the edit and reply functions, the inability to cancel a comment on those (all too rare) occasions that one realizes--in a timely fashion-- that they really aren't very funny, the inability to log on anywhere but at the top page log in button, as well as the aforementioned server speed. Priorities!
If you did reduce the size of those hid boxes at the top of the page, that was an excellent change for which you are to be commended. Lest I appear too complimentary, I'll close by noting my lingering dislike of the Culture and (TV) heading, which I doubt was your doing (for once), but I intend to blame you for anyway.
Love you guys!!!!